RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- Prominent Palestinian activist
Suleiman al-Hathalin succumbed on Monday to wounds sustained when an Israeli police tow truck ran him over two weeks ago.
Hathalin was receiving treatment for serious wounds he sustained to the head, chest, abdomen and pelvis at al-Mizan hospital in Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank, where he was pronounced dead this morning.
The 75-year-old activist and community leader from Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian hamlets in the South Al-Khalil Hills, was run over by an Israeli tow truck on January5.
The occupying regime’s security forces arrived in Umm al-Khair village in Masafer Yatta to seize unregistered and allegedly stolen vehicles.
After locals tried to stop the tow trucks, they fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse the crowds.
Fouad al-Hmour, an activist with the popular resistance committee in Masafer Yatta, told Middle East Eye at the time that Suleiman was “standing on the side of the road when the tow truck suddenly veered off the road and drove straight into him”.
Hmour said the tow truck belonged to a private company and was being operated by a Zionist settler from the area. The tow trucks and the police quickly fled the scene after the incident.
Hathalin, known locally as Haj Suleiman, is an iconic, anti-occupation activist from Al-Khalil, who constantly led demonstrations against the occupation.
His family hails from the Arad area south of the West Bank. He has lived in Umm al-Khair since 1965, when he purchased a plot of land there.
Since the establishment of the Carmel settlement on parts of Umm al-Khair in 1980, Hathalin had led protests against its expansion, which threatened the displacement of the village’s residents.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates denounced the “criminal execution of Hathalin”, saying it will

take his case to the International Criminal Court and relevant UN bodies.
“This is another episode in a series of field executions carried out by the occupation forces that follows the directives of the political and military leadership of this occupying country,” the ministry said.
“It is a reflection of the brutality and racism of the occupation in its suppression and abuse of defenseless Palestinian civilians participating in peaceful marches in defense of their lands in the face of settlements and settlers.”
Zionist settlements on occupied Palestinian land, including the West Bank and East Al-Quds is considered illegal under international law.
As of 2019, there were more than 688,000 settlers living in 150 settlements across the West Bank and East Al-Quds, with the number growing every year.
In occupied East Al-Quds, Zionist authorities on Monday attempted to evict three Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to build a school on the land.
Dozens of the occupying regime’s police officers stormed the home of members of the Salhiya family, ordering the 40 people living on the property to evacuate.
Some family members refused to obey the order and barricaded themselves on the roof with a gas canister.
Israeli media reported that Mahmoud Salhiya had threatened to set himself on fire if the eviction order was carried out.
“We’ve been in this home since the 1950s,” said Salhiya family member Abdallah Ikermawi from the roof of the home. “We don’t have anywhere to go,” he said in quotes provided by the Sheikh Jarrah Committee organization.
Sheikh Jarrah has been a significant flashpoint over the past year, after the occupying regime of Israel tried to expel Palestinian families from the area last May to make way for Zionist settlers.
The events had led to widespread protests in the occupied West Bank and mixed cities of Arabs and Jews, and a large-scale military operation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Zionist forces on Monday prevented activists from entering the area, located north of Al-Quds’ Old City, leaving the Salhiyas to face the eviction order alone.
The so-called Al-Quds municipality said that the land on which the Salhiya home is standing had belonged to the Grand Mufti of Al-Quds Amin al-Husseini, which the Zionist regime expropriated after it occupied the city in 1967.
Mahmoud Salhiya said that his family was expelled from Ein Karm village in West Al-Quds in 1948, and lived in the area during the Jordan rule, which lasted until 1967.
The family built a house on six dunams, where members of the family currently live, and it has an extension that was turned into a plant nursery to support them financially.
The family has been facing eviction since 2017, when their land was allocated for school construction, following 23 years in courts against the Zionist regime, which issued an ultimatum in December for evaluation on January 25.
“Why do they evict us from our homes just to hand it to settlers? And why do they confiscate our lands under the excuse of building schools?... I will not get out of my house,” Salhiya told local media.